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What's for Dinner? #163 [old]

we're moving along at quite a clip here, despite people being out of town and suffering through heat and maybe not cooking as much.... but i know we'll all be back at it soon. so what are you serving up tonight?

i'm ashamed to admit it, but i missed out on International Bacon Day, yesterday (Horrors!), but then again, I figure that EVERYDAY is bacon day, n'est-ce pas?

Or some sort of pork product. At the oldster's today, and my sister is slow roasting via her rotisserie a big fat hunk of pork shoulder with a nice fat cap. it'll be WFD tonight here, and i'll take some home for our dinner tomorrow night too.... That's all i've got so far - THERE WILL BE PORK.

Eating at a friend's holiday cook-out tonight, so the only cooking going on around here this evening will be devising and applying a rub for this beautiful pork shoulder and settling on a cooking technique for tomorrow. Thinking maybe rosemary, garlic, brown sugar, and cayenne (which I think I stole/modified from Bittman years ago), with a nice IPA for the liquid. And while I usually cook shoulder to where it can still be sliced, I just might go ahead and give Will Owen's technique a try. Enjoy the holiday, all.

Hopefully I do it justice. Just entered hour two, in the aforementioned rub and on a bed of whole garlic cloves and rosemary sprigs with most of a bottle of Mirror Pond IPA, a cinnamon stick, and a bay leaf. Hunting around for some fennel seeds, but the spice cabinet is a disaster at the moment. Thinking I'll roast some garden carrots and beets in the juices near the end.

Love Rainshadow, 8IPestle! I am sure that is going to be one fine shoulder! Some of those cooked garlic cloves shmeared on bread, and maybe some horsey sauce on the side for serving (good with the beets too!), sounds like a fine holiday meal...

Didn't think of horseradish, but that is a fine idea for the leftovers. Thanks!

This turned out wonderfully. I know I am far from the first or the last to be indebted to Will Owen for sharing the technique. Tweaked it a little as we all do: Wet roasted just over three pounds about seven hours at 225, two more hours at 195, then flashed it under the broiler for a second. Thanks again, Will!

We're back from the concours/car show at the race track at Lime Rock Park here in Connecticut both sunburned and sated. I hate to admit it but after Car Week in Monterey and the Pebble Beach Concours, I'm getting a little jaded.

Supper this evening will be hanger steak grilled on the stovetop and a riff on Thomas Keller's Summer Vegetable Gratin (Ad Hoc Cookbook). There will be crusty bread to soak up the veggie juices. Deb is doing the heavy lifting. I'll pull a California red from the wine jail.

Last night was salmon glazed with a little melted butter that had some brown sugar, ginger, soy and dijon added. We were both really pleased with the results and this will be added into a semi regular rotation (because it was so incredibly easy.)

Tonight some neighbors who's house I kept and eye on while they were away brought us some bread and cookies from a bakery several hours north of here that we only get to about once a year, sometimes not even that. Its the only bread that does not make me sick. So... tonight is grilled/pressed bacon and cheese sandwiches on this beautiful loaf of sheepherders bread. Leftover gorgonzola butter on the outside of the bread. I'm thinking big spinach salad on the side (its too hot for soup.)

It was a very nice treat. The butter brickle cookies were too! I'm being good and only eating a small amount... not pushing my luck but enjoying every bite. :) Its a great little place. I forbid myself from ordering mail order because I'd do it all the time. http://www.erickschatsbakery.com/

Playing catch-up since I've been gone since Friday (and didn't have time to post on Thursday night).

Thursday - out with friends at my favorite tapas restaurant - beef tenderloin on toast with roasted red pepper, saffron-battered fried prawns with mojo sauce, mushroom-filled artichokes, and something else I cannot recall. Sangria and mango martinis for libations. A very good start to my 6 day weekend. :-)

Friday I headed up to Maine to visit with my sister and BIL at their cabin, which is coming along quite nicely! Every time I go up, they've got yet more done on it - scaffolding is now down and railings going up for the loft sleeping area, and the main guest bedroom now has carpeting and curtains. :-) Dinner was grilled chicken with BBQ sauce, I made a coleslaw with some of the CSA cabbage, and we grilled up some slices of yellow squash, zucchini, red bell pepper, and mushrooms in a grill basket. Vodka mango-lemonade for Sis and me.

Saturday was out and about antiquing...I bought a few tchotckes for the house, and didn't spend a lot - a whopping $34.00 in total. Sis found a 4-foot two-handed cross-cut lumber saw that she'll hang over the sliding doors to the deck. Her husband always says she doesn't buy anything when she goes antiquing. So we come home with the lumber saw. He just looked at it and shook his head. :-)

Saturday's dinner were cheeseburgers for me and BIL, and a chicken chipotle hot dog with peach salsa for Sis. She made a tomato-cucumber salad that she tossed with a blend of olive oil, balsamic, garlic powder, salt, pepper and Italian seasonings. Potato chips alongside. But UNSALTED potato chips. My BIL and looked at each other and said "WHO buys unsalted potato chips?" Umm...yeah. My sister does.

I drove home on Sunday after stopping at just *one* more antique store on the way out of their neck of the woods. Kittehs happy to see me; dinner was easy - chopped and sauteed red bell pepper, carrot slices, chunks of onions, halved sugar snap peas, and quartered bella mushrooms tossed with bow-tie pasta and a garlic-herb cream sauce, sprinkled with crunchy bacon bits.

Various errand-running and furniture ordering are in store for today, I think.